- Posted at 3:20 pm on Mon, Nov 21, 2011
Like a few thousand other maths teachers around the world my jaw dropped with awe and wonder (and some nerdy excitement) when I first came across Khan Academy and it’s ever expanding list of maths videos. I watched video after video and one by one I embedded them into my online learning portal for my students to enjoy. But, they didn’t. They found the videos too long or too boring or too confusing. I surveyed them and the common complaint was that too often it took 8 minutes before he really started getting to the parts they needed to learn or they needed help with. (Even my attention span would find that hard to work with!) The Khan vids have a general target but my students don’t, they want to know exactly how to multiply a 2x3 matrix with a 3x2 matrix but they don’t need to be reminded about the matrix basics. So, I shelved Khan’s website but I took his idea and I set out to make my own.
Armed with a Bamboo tablet and some screencasting software (I love Screenr) I started to record. My videos are targeted at my students and use language that they are familiar with and terms that we have already covered in class. They don’t run longer than 5 minutes and they are supported with questions from their text books that they can turn to for practice. The kids seem to enjoy them, maybe they are just being nice. But I’ll continue to add to the collection so that my videos can join the resource list on my moodle pages, right next to Khan’s. It's not the only teaching they get from me and watching videos isn't the only homework they do. But it is adding some variety to my classes and the response has been positive.
Perhaps I should look at introducing my students to the idea of making their own videos like Brian sugggests here. If anyone is to know what maths problems need the most explaining it’ll be the students themselves.
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